Bangkok, Jan 9 (EFE).- A Thai suspect in the brazen murder of a Cambodian former opposition lawmaker on a Bangkok street has been arrested in Cambodia, the country’s national police said.
Ekalak Paenoi, a 41-year-old former Thai Marine, was arrested on Wednesday afternoon in a village in the Cambodian province of Battambang, bordering Thailand, according to a statement by the Cambodia National Police.
It said Ekalak would be investigated at Battambang Provincial Police Station before being extradited to Thailand.
On Tuesday afternoon, Lim Kimya, a 73-year-old dual Cambodian-French national, was shot dead in a crowded area near Wat Bowonniwet Vihara in the historic Phra Nakhon district of Bangkok soon after he had arrived in the Thai capital with his French wife and a family member by bus from Cambodia’s temple town of Siem Reap.
A handout photo made available by the Royal Thai Police shows Thai national Ekalak Paenoi, a suspected gunman who allegedly killed former Cambodia opposition Member of Parliament Lim Kimya, after being arrested in Battambang province, Cambodia, 08 January 2025 (issued 09 January 2025). EFE/EPA/ROYAL THAI POLICE
A police officer attempted to revive the former opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) lawmaker, but he died at the scene.
The suspect escaped on a motorbike, which was found abandoned at a petrol station, and he subsequently slipped across the border.
The Bangkok Post reported Thai police as saying the suspect was likely hired as a hitman, and that police believed a Cambodian spotter had traveled on the same bus as Lim Kimya and pointed him out to the gunman.
Lim Kimya had been elected as MP for the CNRP in 2013, and by 2017 the party had become a popular opposition force and the only real threat to former strongman Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party ahead of the 2018 election.
Amid what the International Federation for Human Rights described as “a relentless campaign of harassment, prosecutions, and detentions of [CNRP] members and supporters,” in 2017 the Cambodian Supreme Court dissolved the party and arrested leader Kem Sokha in the middle of the night amid the crackdown that prompted many CNRP leaders and members to flee into exile.
After six years of house arrest, Kem Sokha was in 2023 convicted of treason, sentenced to 27 years in prison, and stripped of his political rights.
Although Lim Kimya was a French national who reportedly previously worked for the French Ministry of Economy and Finance, and could have also left, he chose to remain in Cambodia.
Monovithya Kem, daughter of Kem Sokha and one of those living in exile, remembered Lim Kimya as “more than a colleague, he was a family friend.”
“He was courageous. He didn’t need or want anything, his political involvement was purely selfless. He was a true patriot,” she wrote on X.
Although the motive for the former MP’s murder is not yet clear, human rights organizations have pointed out that it comes amid a pattern of cross-border (transnational) repression of activists and political opponents, which has included surveillance, harassment and intimidation.
ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights said it “firmly believes that Lim Kimya’s assassination is part of a broader, more insidious pattern of attacks targeting Cambodian dissidents, activists, and their families. This targeted murder further intensifies the often deadly climate of political dissent in the region.”
Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates Director Phil Robertson said the shooting “has all the hallmarks of a political assassination, and looks to be a significant escalation in the use of transnational repression in Bangkok.»
“The direct impact will be to severely intimidate the hundreds of Cambodian political opposition figures, NGO activists, and human rights defenders who have already fled to Thailand to escape PM Hun Manet’s campaign of political repression in Cambodia.”
Elaine Pearson, Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, wrote on X that «the cold-blooded killing of a former Cambodian opposition member in downtown Bangkok sends a chilling message to Cambodian activists that no one is safe, even if they have left Cambodia.»
Hun Sen, who ruled the country with an iron fist for almost four decades, ended up winning all parliamentary seats in the 2018 election, and a comfortable majority in the 2023 election, before handing over power to his son, Hun Manet, that August. EFE
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